ENWorld’s Hot Roleplaying Games – June 2015

Right, it’s been two months, so let’s see what’s changed with the ENWorld list of hot RPGs. Usual reminder applies: RPGs are scored on the chart based on what’s being actively discussed on as wide a pool of internet fora and blogs as ENWorld can find RSS feeds for. It isn’t tracking sales, and it isn’t even tracking popularity (because conceivably a game could get onto the chart if there were a sufficiently virulent negative reaction to it). What I present here are the scores assigned to each game, not the percentages (which can tend to obscure whether there’s been a recent explosion of RPG discussion – for example, as associated with the D&D 5E release – or whether things are comparatively quiet on the RPG talkosphere).

Note that according to the chart page a 0 score doesn’t mean nobody’s mentioned a particular game – a statistically significant sample has shown up but no more than that. For sanity’s sake I’m only tracking zero-scores which previously scored. Games which did not chart presumably either failed to even yield a statistically significant sample or have had their categories retired from the chart (as appears to be the case with the redundant Dnd/Pathfinder category). At least, that’s according to the ENWorld writeup – though since I’ve not seen a game drop off the chart since the Dnd/Pathfinder and Stage categories dropped off, I’m sceptical about that. Note also that the “OSR” entry should be taken with a pinch of salt – it’s the accumulated score of a whole bunch of OSR games, but this includes Stars Without Number which also has its own, separate entry.

Here’s the chart of the shifts in rank (probably more significant for higher-scoring games):

So, it looks like that the scores for most games dropped a fair bit this time, with a few exceptions managing to hold their own or even improve their scores. The overall number of points available seems to have dropped, which suggests either an overall decrease in RPG discussion as we come into the summer months or a readjustment to the chart algorithms. Certainly, the score drops do not appear to have affected everyone equally – Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPGs and the Star Trek RPGs were blasted to near-total oblivion this time, though I do have to wonder whether this is down to a tweak to the monitoring processes involved (for instance, an edit to try and discount glancing references to Trek or Star Wars in otherwise-unrelated threads).

The general decline in the scores for TSR-era editions of D&D continues, which may be down to a combination of factors – it could be that 5E has managed to win over the TSR generation in the way Wizards had hoped, and it could also be that most people who still care about those editions of the game have got onboard the OSR train and are paying more attention to the newer games coming out through that avenue or their favoured retro-clones. (AD&D 2E actually managed to increase its rank modestly this time, but only because of the overall drop in points many games experienced; 2E‘s absolute score is now so low that it now doesn’t actually have that many points to lose.)

World of Darkness is the most high-profile game (or set of games) to have actually increased its score this time, solidifying its place in the top ten; it’s possible that the unveiling of the Beast: the Primordial Kickstarter may have helped here. There’s still a big gulf of points between it and FATE, so we probably won’t see the World of Darkness regain its old place as the top non-D&D-derived RPG in the short term, but it certainly seems like a long-term possibility if Onyx Path can sustain this level of buzz around it.

Ars Magica also seems to have enjoyed a bit of a bump in rank and score, presumably from the reaction to Atlas Games announcing their plans for the future of Mythic Europe. In short: they’re declaring the Ars Magica 5E line complete after the next couple of supplements come out, but whilst they don’t rule out doing a 6th Edition at some point in the long-term future they’d rather focus on producing other games set in the Mythic Europe setting for the time being. This seems like a smart move to me – the 5th Edition is an extraordinarily complete game line and a much-loved version of the game, and any 6th Edition would either involve so little change as to be seen as a money-grab or such substantial change as to split the fanbase. Atlas seem acutely aware of both possibilities, and especially aware of how tight-knit the fanbase for Ars Magica is – and therefore what a colossal shame it would be if it were fractured through edition warring – so holding off on putting out a 6th Edition for a good long while seems like a good idea to me.